A teacher at my school was born a Filipino citizen, and travels frequently back and forth from LAX to MNL via Philippine Airlines. The horror stories I have heard...flights cancelled because Imelda Marcos wanted a 747 to fly in a load of fresh orchids for a relative's wedding...and the joke was PAL was an acronym for "Plane Always Late".

But that is in the past, apparently. She recently flew to MNL, and despite a 12+ hour delay (due to the Orange Alert level status), she found once on board, it was a very pleasant experience. "Bring your patience at check-in" she told me, "there are a lot of people bringing HUGE amounts of things to the Philippines - sometimes I think they're trying to bring an entire Target!!"...but other than that, she says it is SO much improved from the old days, it feels like a different company altogether - and keep in mind, this is a woman who's airline of choice used to be SQ!!

No idea, but weren't they almost bancrupt a coulpe of years ago? They fly A340, right?

1998 actually and the formerly operated 4 (I think) A340-200s up to 1998 and those now settle with AR. PR currently operates 4 A340-300s.

The horror stories I have heard...flights cancelled because Imelda Marcos wanted a 747 to fly in a load of fresh orchids for a relative's wedding...and the joke was PAL was an acronym for "Plane Always Late".

Yeah I've heard of cases of Imelda commandeering PAL's aircraft, usually DC-8s and DC-10s for her own personal use. Usually she'd go on trips to Europe or the US to do some shopping to add for her wardrobe which was a s*** load of shoes, bras, purses, etc. One story I heard was that one time her and Ferdinand were going abroad, taking one aircraft EACH which pretty much left PR's schedules in ruins.

"Bring your patience at check-in" she told me, "there are a lot of people bringing HUGE amounts of things to the Philippines - sometimes I think they're trying to bring an entire Target!!"

That is so true. You can notice a Filipino-American traveller by how many "balikbayan" boxes he or she drags. Both times when I flew PR, it seemed like not one person was without 1 or 2 boxes. My family usually brings around 6 balikbayan boxes to the RP.

As for service, it seems to be the same for me as it was in 2000 but one F/A still owes me to this day one 7UP.

BTW Diesel33,
Kumusta ka na?

[Edited 2004-03-28 23:26:49]

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